Free Republic

posted by Ari Melber on 09/06/2008 Sarah Palin is an able liar, as her acceptance speech showed. She may be a coward, too, at least when it comes to facing down the reporters she blasted from the comfort of that solitary podium in St. Paul. The McCain campaign has admitted to a ban on most press interviews for its largely unknown but popular running mate. McCain's aides are selling this highly unusual approach with rank contempt for the public. "Who cares?" laughed Nicolle Wallace, when pressed on why Palin won't take questions by Time's Jay Carney, on MSNBC. "But I...

With the selection of Sarah Palin as Vice President Candidate on the Republican ticket, the presidential race is less about Democrat vs. Republican, than it is about Liberal vs. Conservative. Democrats and Republicans both agree that Washington is "broken" and both sides want "change." Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that government is the answer while John McCain and Sarah Palin believe that government is the problem. Clearly, change can be for good or for bad. The speech by Sarah Palin marks the well-defined line in the sand that conservatives have wanted for months to have John McCain draw....

On the Madness of Modern Liberalism: The egalitarianism and welfarism of modern liberal government are incompatible with the facts of human nature and the human condition. But the rise to power of the liberal agenda has resulted from the fact that the people of western societies have irrationally demanded that governments take care of them and manage their lives instead of protecting their property rights. This misconception results in massive violations of those rights while permitting government officials to act out their own and their constituents’ psychopathology. The liberal agenda gratifies various types of pathological dependency; augments primitive feelings of...

As National Review's in-house demography bore, I've been struck this last week by the left's fierce hostility to Sarah Palin's fecundity. One gentleman - well, okay, maybe not a "gentleman" but certainly an impeccably sensitive progressive new male - wrote to me from Shelton, Washington: This abortion prohibitionist hag won’t cut it among women with brains.And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed. Each to her own, Mister Sensitive. You can be a 44-year old mother of five expecting her first grandchild and...

excerpts ... He tried to rent a room at the Metro Hotel in Woking, after spending longer than expected in the town. He was asked for ID and showed them his military pass. But staff told him it was company policy to turn away members of the Armed Forces. 'Soldiers don't get treated like this in America. There they are treated like heroes but here they are being treated like scum. It is heartbreaking.' [ <-- AMEN!]

OMAHA, Neb. - A La Vista man claims he was beaten by Omaha Police has filed a complaint against the department and plans to hire an attorney. Darnell Birdine, 19, said it happened at Septemberfest Sunday night. Omaha police said they saw someone fire shots near 10th and Webster, which is near the Septemberfest midway. As they responded to that shots fired call, they decided to close the event for the night.

Palinize: to slander and caricature a working-class female public figure for the noble advancement of liberalism. Sarah Palin—self-made woman, and governor of Alaska—is being reducing by the left to a hickish, white trash mom of five, analogous to the manner that esteemed jurists like Kenneth ("cigarette lawyer") Starr and Robert Bork were slandered by the media as incompetent right right-wing fanatics, and Clarence Thomas was pilloried as an affirmative action sex-maniac. Why does the left and liberal media, in McCarthyite fashion, now seek to destroy rather than just oppose these public servants? First, there is the annoited's notion that the...

A Lesson on Liberals and Feminism September 2, 2008 BEGIN TRANSCRIPTRUSH: Let's talk about the religion of liberalism for just a second, ladies and gentlemen. What do liberals believe? Well, among other things -- listen to me on this -- what do liberals believe? They believe that a woman is more than just being a mom at home. It's what they say they believe. They believe that a woman is every bit as qualified to hold public office as a man. They believe that premarital sex and sex by teenagers is normal, natural, and we shouldn't try to stop...

There's something about outspoken conservative women that drives the Left mad. It's a peculiar pathology I've reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can't help themselves. Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an "R" by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender....

"There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once remarked. Where, then, are the liberal women when it comes to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin? Palin became the first woman to grace a Republican ticket on Friday, August 29, when Senator John McCain selected her as his running mate. The following day, a diarist at the mainstream left-wing Daily Kos (Barack Obama himself appeared as a Kos diarist back in 2005) suggested without any evidence whatsoever that Sarah Palin's son, Trig, recently born and with Down syndrome, was...

    YOU MAY BE A RACISTLiberal, Media, GLOSSARY White = lacks sufficient melanin, pathologically racist, unavoidable funding mechanism Men =  genetically predatory, mean spirited, stupid, clown, stumbling block, intolerable funding mechanism Middle class = unworthy, classless, trapped funding mechanism Lunch pale = actually works, fool who can't figure out how to fleece the government, unhealthy funding mechanism Blue collar = non academic, neck larger than a pencil, bullying funding mechanism Catholic =  bible thumper, moronic moralist, unenlightened, believes bedtime stories, judgmental funding mechanism Ethnic = birth father identified, unavoidable funding mechanism Elderly Women = outlived usefulness, undiagnosed dementia, uniquely disqualified...

Film-maker Michael Moore has apparently praised the gulf weather for its chance of disrupting the Republican convention: “This hurricane is proof that there is a god in heaven.” Another low point in politics, though possibly one that could be passed off with a laugh—a partisan irony, rather than a serious derangement. But over on the leftist Daily Kos website, there is a post that sinks much lower—so low that it caused many of the commentators to denounce it. Which led another commentator to make this remark: I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to destroy the Republican Party as...

The attacks on John McCain's bold veep pick have begun. But if the critics think Sarah Palin is an easy target, they'd better think again. She can fire back. Working moms of the world, unite. "There's a gigantic difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and between me and I suspect my vice-presidential opponent," Joe Biden said while campaigning in Toledo Sunday. "She's good-looking." It's a dismissive put-down we would expect from Biden, one a Republican couldn't get away with. Obama spokesman Bill Burton was more direct, saying that McCain had irresponsibly put "the former mayor of a town of...

We noted the nutroots’ deepening Palin Derangement Syndrome over the weekend, topped by a diarist at the Daily Kos who’s been spreading disgusting, bottom-of-the-barrel rumors — picked up by the excitable and shameless Andrew Sullivan — about Gov. Sarah Palin’s youngest child and attacking one of Palin’s daughters as the mother of Trig. The Free Republic fights back with photos of a very pregnant Gov. Palin in late February. I linked to an April blog post from an airline passenger who met the pregnant governor on a flight from Fairbanks. It is unbelievably surreal that this dirtbag Kossack rumor has...

Feeding Ducks & Geese: The Parks Division strongly discourages the feeding of area waterfowl. Because food supplied by people is easy for the birds to obtain, ducks and geese lose their natural migrating instincts. This leads to overpopulation, making creatures more susceptible to disease and predators. Please allow them to find their own sources of food.

Last Thursday evening at the Democratic National Convention, presidential candidate Barack Obama tried to score a political touchdown on the 50 yard line of Denver's Invesco Field stadium. Instead, he won the all-time governmental convention award for the best over-the-top political spectacle of sight, sound, speech and pyrotechnics – complete with superstar performances, Braveheart-like epic music endings and an Olympic-sized fireworks show. For a week prior to the event, newscasters, commentators and pundits were trying to guess what exactly that Greco-Roman, column-structure was that served as a stage backdrop, and what it was supposed to be representing and stating on...

Noticed that two planks of the party's platform have changed? The one about drilling is gone. Buh bye ANWR. And the new one about global warming? Yeah, that's real conservative. *SARCASM*

RUSH: This is Sarah Palin and her accomplishments. Obama cannot make a speech like this. PALIN: In serving as the team mom and coaching some basketball on the side, I got involved in the PTA and then was elected to the city council and then elected mayor of my hometown where my agenda was to stop wasteful spending and cut property taxes and put the people first! (cheers and applause) I was then appointed ethics commissioner and chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. And when I found corruption there, I fought it hard and I held the...

RUSH: Senator McCain just took the podium with raucous music, raucous crowd energy. The place is going nuts there in Dayton, Ohio. Let's join it in progress and listen. (cheers and applause) The senator is looking genuinely happy today. (cheers and applause) MCCAIN: Thank you. RUSH: Well, I'm just describing this for you all who can't see it, his wife is hugging him. MCCAIN: Thank you. CROWD: John McCain! John McCain! John McCain! John McCain! MCCAIN: Thanks for reminding me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. CROWD: John McCain! John McCain! John McCain! John...

USH: Now, this bite from the Obama speech last night. It's a montage of The Messiah talking about himself. This runs a minute 17 seconds. None of these I's -- I, I, I -- is repeated. OBAMA: I accept your nomination. I thank you. I am grateful... I love you. I am so proud... I stood before... That's why I stand here......... Tonight I say... I don't know about you... I'm not ready... I quote... Americans I know... I don't believe... I just think... I am standing here... I see... I think... I listen... I remember... I stood... I hear......

Palin is a conservative, McCain is not. Is that enough for you?

For almost a thousand years the chief creative force in western civilization was Christianity until around the year 1725, when Christianity declined and practically disappeared among intellectuals. Of course this left a vacuum. People cannot get along without a belief in something outside themselves, and during the next hundred years they concocted a new belief in the divinity of nature. By 1730 the collapse of Christianity was nearly complete in England and the nutballs were off and running, writing about modern man corrupting gentle peoples and destroying nature’s beauty. The Caucasian male, according to philosophers and idle soothsayers of the...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Kaiser Permanente is contacting 960 mothers whose babies may have been exposed to a health care worker in San Francisco who has an active case of tuberculosis. The worker was assigned to the postpartum unit in the maternity ward of Kaiser's San Francisco Medical Center to care for mothers and infants. (snip)

Campaigns usually collapse because of gaffes -- off-the-cuff actions that accidentally reveal the true nature of candidates. And the Barack Obama campaign has had more than its share of revealing gaffes: Obama's statement that rural voters turn to God, guns and racism because they have no jobs; his explanation that proper tire gauge use would fix high gas prices; his self-aggrandizing exhortation that he has "become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions"; his associations with Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers and Tony Rezko; the list goes on and on. But gaffes are not the...

I have long wondered why Liberalism in America came to be associated with quasi-socialist policies and big government. In Europe, liberals are "social democrats" from what I understand, while the term "liberal" is applied to free market and what we would call libertarian types. Liberalism is the foundation of this country and originally expressed pro-limited government views not held by liberals today, but in fact held by conservatives today. The classiscal Liberalism of old is much closer politically to Libertarianism or Conservatism today than to what we have come to know as Liberalism. I have seen many anti-liberal sentiments here...

In a dirty and dusty clay home in ancient Judea, the wizened old man worked over the swollen body of the girl. She had committed that gravest of sins in the Jewish culture of her time: She was unmarried and pregnant, and had left her hometown months ago to avoid bringing shame on her family. Now, she desperately hoped this old man could bring about an even greater transgression, aborting the child within her. "I think we have it," the old man muttered. "Now, we'll just …" Suddenly he gasped. "What is it?" asked the elderly woman who aided him....

Bruce Walker has written an encouraging piece in the American Thinker. He's been tracking results of the bipartisan Battleground Poll since 2002, and points out that Conservative/Liberal self-identification has consistently been roughly 60% conservative, 40% liberal. He goes on to analyze why these data are so at odds with popular perception. Short answer: Those to the left of center run from the liberal label while conservatives proudly self-identify. He also provides examples showing how skewed polling questions make America look more liberal than it actually is. I believe this to be true. America is not a liberal nation, and recent...

Reuters thinks that tax breaks and loopholes "costs" government its tax receipts. This is a perfect example of class hatred ginned up by the media to further class warfare between Americans. The absolute truth is that if people use the tax code to limit their tax burden they are not costing the government anything, but are using legal means to avoid a higher tax burden. Further, our money is NOT the government's property in the first place so a lower tax take is in no way "costing" the government anything. Yet, Reuters still uses this class warfare rhetoric to report...

Earlier this month Andrew Sullivan, a well-known writer, once in the center, now on the left, nominated me for what is apparently his lowest badge of distinction for defending citizens who shoot to wound graffiti vandals, or "taggers," while committing their vandalism. Under the heading, "Malkin Award Nominee," Sullivan provides a quote from my radio show: "'So you will now say -- I hear the voice of an ACLU member -- 'Dennis, do you think that this guy should have shot these people spray painting graffiti on his shop?' To which my answer is yes. I do. Not to kill....

I've had this epiphany lately -- what really bugs me about about liberals doesn't have nearly so much to do with their left-wing socialist policy positions, but more their attitude. It's this self-righteous, sanctimonious arrogance. Everything they say is just dripping with it. So this is why Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden is particularly notable. It would have been very difficult to take a campaign like Barack Obama's and make it even more arrogant. Well, yes, he can (si, el puede)! As if one back-slapping, smarmy BSer wasn't enough for you, now we've got two!

SAGINAW - T-Boone Pickens says they're the wave of the future. But a wind turbine meant to save one Saginaw family on electricity has instead sparked a huge headache for their neighbors. "It makes a terrible air raid noise," says Debbie Behrens, about the high-pitched whine made by the turbine. "It's driving me crazy." What's worse, is that Debbie and her son Lance both say that high-pitched hum is now causing them problems, physically. "You occasionally have the dizziness," explains Lance, "The ringing in the ears, I've never experienced the ringing in the ears." It turns out, there is a...

The California Supreme Court made it easier Thursday for prison inmates to win parole despite a governor's objections, ruling that a woman who fatally shot and stabbed another woman with a potato peeler should remain free. The 4 to 3 ruling, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, could affect nearly 1,000 parole cases now on appeal. Lawyers on both sides said it was the first time in recent history that the state high court ruled in favor of a prisoner in a parole case. The decision upheld the release of Sandra Davis Lawrence, who spent nearly 24 years in...

Defence and security spending rose faster than any part of the budget — increasing its share of government spending from 22 per cent in 2001 to 29 per cent in 2008. But spending has increased across the budget. Bush was aided and abetted by a Congress dominated by Republicans until 2006. Juicy spending bills were passed on everything from farm subsidies to health (up 44 per cent) and education (up 47 per cent). After all, Bush had run as a "compassionate conservative"; he introduced the largest new entitlement since the Great Society programs of the 1960s: a prescription drug benefit...

One of the highlights of the 2000 presidential campaign was Winifred Skinner. You may remember her—she was the can-collecting 79-year-old woman who used the money from her foraging for tin and aluminum to finance her prescription drugs. She was interviewed on Good Morning America about her plight, and Al Gore highlighted her story in his campaign speeches. Chosen by Gore to be one of his 13 "citizen advisers" before the first presidential debate in Boston, she even traveled there in a Winnebago to do her part in bringing about change. At some point in the saga, it came out that...

This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline. The only thing we can be sure of is that Obama will choose someone who is the polar opposite of all his advisers until now. In other words, it will be a very, very white male who was probably proud of his country even before being chosen as Obama's running mate. Obama's got a lot of ground to make up following that performance last weekend at the Saddleback presidential forum with pastor...

Late Sunday night, my wife and I drove from Sacramento, Calif., to Los Angeles. We figured that it would be wise to leave Sacramento in the early evening to avoid traffic. At 7 p.m., we climbed into the car and headed for Interstate 5, the major highway connecting Northern California and Southern California. For the first five hours of the drive, things went as planned. The highway was relatively clear, and we sailed along happily at 80 mph. Then we saw it. A sign. A large orange sign reading: Freeway Closed Ahead, 11 p.m.-4 a.m. It was too late to...

Evan Sayet’s “Right To Laugh” — Tuesday, August 19th Posted by Dirty Harry on Saturday, August 16th, 2008 Evan Sayet is not only a terrific comedian, his brilliant deconstruction of liberalism, which you can watch above, is the only time I’ve ever watched anything on my computer that was longer than four minutes.

On June 20, 2006, William Bruce approached his mother as she worked at her desk at home and struck killing blows to her head with a hatchet. Two months earlier, William, a 24-year-old schizophrenic, had been released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Maine, against the recommendations of his doctors. "Very dangerous indeed for release to the community," wrote one in William's record. But the doctor's notes also show that William's release was backed by government-funded patient advocates. According to medical records, the advocates -- none of them physicians -- appear to have fought for his right to refuse treatment,...

“It is easy to ignore the storm if you look at the opposite horizon.  When the storm reaches your location there can be no more ignorance.�I hate to tell you, but the storm has reached your location and it is a Category 5 hurricane. The levees are leaking. Ignore it at your own peril. The 6,000 sq ft McMansion buying, BMW leasing, $5 Starbucks latte drinking, granite countertop upgrading, home equity borrowing days are coming to an end. The American consumer will not go without a fight.For the last seven years the American consumer has carried the weight of the...

Trapped in an Orwellian nightmare, Canadian author Howard Rotberg struggles to clear his name. -------------------------------------------------------- Howard Rotberg still shudders when he remembers hearing the words. “He is a f***ing Jew!” His attacker wasn’t a Nazi brownshirt in Germany circa 1938. Rotberg, an author and lawyer, experienced the anti-Semitic verbal attack at a Canadian college town bookstore in 2004....

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, you just might be a liberal if... * You're sure the Constitution explicitly guarantees the right to abortion and gay marriage, but not the right to own a handgun. * You think Dan Quayle is the dumbest Vice-President we ever had because he believed a flash card that misspelled "potato," but think Obama is a genius despite the fact he believes we have more than 57 states. * You'd be more upset about your favorite candidate being endorsed by the NRA than the Communist Party. * You think the same criminals who use guns in...

The Democrats live and die by the ad hominem of racism. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=20016813&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered the Palestinian Authority a preliminary final status peace agreement that would see Israel surrender 93 percent of Judea and Samaria. Ha’aretz learned that Olmert presented the deal when he met last week with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, and is still waiting on a reply from the Palestinian side. The offer also includes surrendering a small area of Israel’s Negev desert to the Palestinians to make up for the 7 percent of the so-called “West Bank” where large Jewish towns today exist that Israel would retain.

Fox News has a report on the efficacy of "Gun Free Zones" A must see.

Some stay in this cynical and rebellious mode for life. Universities are particularly suited for propagating this idea because abstract theories about freedoms and equality can be advocated without experiencing the consequences of their real world applications. For those who leave the university and the protest marches, life out in the real world begins a new stage of intellectual awakening—or should. The strong libertine and socialistic current today is a manifestation of this university-type thinking. It attempts to deny the necessity of rules and embrace the naiveté of youth. When we are twenty we feel we have no heart if...

At the University of Chicago no man looms larger than Milton Friedman, the Nobel laureate who led the “Chicago school” of economics and who died in 2006. When the university announced plans for a $200m economics institute in May, it seemed fitting that the centre should be named after him. But a small war broke out. On June 6th more than 100 faculty members wrote to the university’s president to protest against the institute. Armed with academia’s common weapons, indignation and verbosity, they said they were all “disturbed by the ideological and disciplinary preference implied by the university’s massive support...

Russia apparently isn't in a quagmire. They apparently did go to the UN and ask for permission first. They are not in an unnecessary act of aggression. I haven't seen any drive by reporters lament any unilateral actions, have you?

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Democrats shaped a set of principles Saturday that commits the party to guaranteed health care for all, heading off a potentially divisive debate and edging the party closer to the position of Barack Obama's defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The party's platform committee moved smoothly through a range of issues for the fall campaign and approved a document that will go to the Democratic convention in Denver later this month for adoption. There was little dissent -- or room for it -- in the day's meeting and a compromise on health policy took one flash-point off the...

This video series is titled “In Defense of World War II.” I didn’t realize we had to defend it, but regardless of that, here’s an education brought to you by Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens.

http://www.hillaryclintonforum.net/discussion/showthread.php?t=22824 Today, 04:16 PM JJ4Hillary Gold Member = >500 Posts Join Date: Feb 2008 Posts: 630 Poster Rank: #118 Barack Obama To Little Girl: America's Not So Great (hotair) YouTube - Barack Obama To Little Girl: America's Not So Great http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d667NAI9HIM http://hotair.com/archives/2008/08/0...t-it-once-was/